The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
H. L. MenckenThe formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
H. L. MenckenThe American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
H. L. MenckenNo reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
H. L. MenckenI am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
H. L. MenckenMy belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.
H. L. Mencken